Catherine Widgery

still life, 1991

Concrete

20 elements, each 8" x 18" x 30"

I found that in a small fragment of a branch one senses the gesture of a living body. The carved figures on Medieval tombs, so still and innocent, their heads resting on a cold stone pillow, seem to exist because of a wish to preserve an image of that which once was alive, to hold it forever, frozen in time. Just as Socrates Scupture Park is itself a fragile piece of nature on the edge of an urban wasteland, so does the smallest fragment of nature become precious. The sense of rest (REPOS) is at once seductive and unsettling. We are drawn to that infinite comfort even as we recognize it as death. Perhaps in any graveyard what moves us is our sense of vulnerability; life is fragile, ephemeral... these quiet lives have passed into oblivion. Yet, more alarming are the cemetaries for the unknown soldiers; there the sheer number of markers suggests violence and destruction of young lives unnaturally cut short. It is a final irony that the tombs themselves speak not of life, but of an impersonal order, a silence, a stillness -- a permanent rest.